Vivek Murthy

And this became our introduction to public health.

And what I realized then is that I really enjoyed the experience of bringing people together around a vision for how to improve health at scale.

And that's what began my journey in public health, which took me

to building more nonprofits ultimately led me to building a technology company focused on improving research and collaboration on clinical trials.

But what tied all of those efforts together was really this common desire to bring people together around ideas that can improve health at scale.

Well, it was interesting.

I didn't feel young because I felt that what I was bringing with me were

a set of experiences and perspectives that I hoped would be helpful.

But the other thing is I had to get used to working with people who were in different stations of life.

So when I was 17 years old and my sister and I were building this nonprofit organization, I had to work with

principals of schools and superintendents and philanthropists who are 30, 40 years older than I was.

And so the issue of being in different ages was less of an issue for me.

But what I found and what I was really excited to encounter in government was

that they were people of all ages and stages who were extraordinarily talented and who were doing amazing work.

We were there because of our ideas and our willingness to work hard and our creativity.

And the last thing I'll say about that, which I found to be interesting during confirmation, is senators rightly asked, do I have enough experience to do this job?

It's a question they should ask everybody for any major post in government.

And I was able to make a case that I did.

But I found that one interesting thing is,

When we get older, I think we tend to forget what it's like to be younger, right?